Science, Clinical Practice, and Collective Responsibility
About this Event
Under the Patronage of HRH Princess Ghida Talal, Chairperson of the King Hussein Cancer Foundation & Center.
When there is no “Post”
Modern trauma theory was largely shaped by the experiences of soldiers returning home. The diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) emerged in the 1970s and 1980s to describe individuals who had survived war and were now physically safe, yet psychologically overwhelmed by memory, flashbacks, and hyperarousal.
This framework presupposes a return to safety. It assumes that trauma has ended, and that healing begins once threat has ceased. But for 2 billion people living under siege, occupation, displacement, and ongoing violence — particularly in Palestine — trauma is not something that happened in the past; it is continually unfolding. In such contexts, there is no ‘post’ to trauma.
Trauma for these communities is not an event. It is the ongoing context; a reality witnessed daily in the work of Early Light Foundation’s work, especially in our global clinic and flagship programme, Healing for Gaza.
War trauma shapes identity, family structures, child development, education systems, religious meaning-making, and political life across generations. It becomes embedded in bodies, in institutions, and in collective memory.
The genocide in Gaza and the overarching military occupation of Palestine has illustrated that clinical and psychosocialmodels designed for individuals living in post-conflict safety and more resourced settings such as the Global North can either be ineffective for communities living in ongoing threat, or at worse put them at risk of harm Our War Trauma Conference begins from this place of urgency to ensure existing frameworks meet reality, and seeks to seed a paradigm shift together, in order to effectively and ethically offer pathways of healing and hope for children, families and communities worldwide.
Of concern for us is a common conflation of “PTSD” with “trauma” in academic, clinical, humanitarian and policy spaces — conceptually, analytically, diagnostically, which risks obscuring this reality.
Core themes include:
- Child trauma and development in chronic threat environments
- Men, torture, humiliation, and invisible forms of suffering
- Parenting and family systems in contexts of war
- Research, psychometrics, and the measurement of war trauma
- Somatics, spirituality, and cultural approaches to healing
- Intergenerational trauma and collective memory
- Indigenous and decolonial approaches to trauma care
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Landmark Amman Hotel & Conference Center, Al-Hussein Bin Ali Street, Amman, Jordan
GBP 100.00 to GBP 450.00
